After months of speculation, rumor, and silence from Microsoft, the company is finally talking publicly about Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista. Microsoft says that the first public beta of Windows Vista SP1 will be available in the next few weeks to TechNET and MSDN subscribers. The company confirmed that a smaller group of testers is already putting SP1 through its paces.

As to when the general public can expect to try a beta of SP1, the company only says that it will offer a prerelease version sometime after this second wave of testing, once the company considers the code stable enough to be essentially a release candidate. Assuming the second beta in September goes well, we suspect that a public preview will happen in November or December.